Haunted
by Ethine
Summary: When Sebastian makes a choice that forever changes his and Ciel's fate, he is haunted by his consequences. No matter where or how far he runs, Ciel always finds him. Will he ever be free, or will he accept his fate? Major Character death, reincarnation, etc. Rated mature for a reason. SebaCiel.
1. Chapter 1

**A/N:** Hey, lovely readers! You are welcome to hate me all you want, because I KNOW that I suck, and I'm a shit author. Why do I keep tormenting you with new story upon new story, yet leave current works on unexpected hiatuses? Because I am a terrible person. Anyway, I read a one shot with a similar premise to this, though I cannot remember by whom or what it was called, and I found myself to be unsatisfied with the ending. It got me to thinking about how I would portray this idea, and well, here we fucking are. It's not going to be a very long story, but I can promise that it will have several chapters.

Thanks to my darling Kit for being my goldfish and editing my shit. Another big thanks to SebasuchansKitten for composing the following poem for this story. I love you so very much. You should all thank Kit for motivating me to write, and to stop procrastinating. I'm trying very hard to finish several chapters of other works all at once. Anyway, I'll stop rambling now. Enjoy~

 _Inside my corpse I'm a trembling wreck_

 _Yet I can't help the composure I feel_

 _I sense your soft breathing on my neck_

 _To remind me that this moment is real_

 _I heard you choke, I heard the snap_

 _But I still tasted a terrible tart_

 _I felt you deaden in my lap_

 _Was that your neck or was that my heart?_

 _To this day I carry your body,_

 _Whether in a coffin or in a sack_

 _I savage you until I'm no longer broken,_

 _Yet you keep coming back_

 _By your presence I'm still haunted,_

 _Though in my mind, I won't believe it true,_

 _I try to convince myself you're forgotten,_

 _But I could never forget you…_

-"Haunted" by SebasuchansKitten

 **Chapter One**

 _I had taken my Master's life; yet I did not consume his soul…_

He lay in a bed of sterling white roses, his hands placed gently, overlapping on the small of his stomach. Placed directly in the center of the softly rocking gondola, he could almost be mistaken for a porcelain doll, he was so still. The moonlight fell upon his pallid face, making his flawless skin appear more alabaster than it was. The coal black, silken eyepatch was a stark contrast to his translucent flesh. His eye was shut in rest, nary a wrinkle or worry line marring his face. Obscenely long, dark lashes dusted his high cheek bones, and his pouting lips were parted slightly, though he breathed silently through his nose. The rise and fall of his chest was barely noticeable, and I was only able to pick up the tiny movements because of my enhanced eyesight. I let my vermillion eyes rest upon his noble visage for far too long, studying the familiar features for possibly the billionth time. His image was burned into my mind, never to be forgotten in the coming millennia. In all of my eternal life, there had never been a soul I desired as much as I had his; there had never been a human that I had formed a contract with that possessed an ounce of personality or intelligence that Ciel Phantomhive had. He was a depthless pool of everything a person would wish to be, but would never obtain. There would never be another as tempting as my Master. The epitome of all that I would ever desire, held in such a dainty shell of a human.

Turning my attention back to the task at hand, I continued to row with the long paddle, gliding it through the still water. The night was silent, not a single breeze ghosting against the flesh of my cheeks. It was hauntingly beautiful, eerie and breathtaking all at once. It was not long before I spotted the massive rock formation on an abandoned island. There, I knew I would find what I sought out. By now my Master was roused from sleep, his single deep sapphire orb gazing out over the water blankly. When the gondola gently brushed against the sand of the beach, I turned to him and lifted him from his flowery bed. I carried him in my arms, up the face of the steep cliff, and into the dark and silent wood.

His body was so frail, so light that if I had not been able to feel his warm flesh through my gloves, or his gentle breath against my cheek, I would think him a mere phantom. His thin arms were loosely curled over my shoulders and around my neck, and his slim fingers dug into my tailcoat. It was his time to leave this earth, and we both were highly aware of that fact. I had fulfilled my end of our contract, ruthlessly smiting each and every enemy of my Master. His revenge had been exacted, and now it was time for me to partake of my meal. He was not afraid of what was to come; he was merely a satisfied and sated cat, relishing his victory over the last remaining mouse. I could sense in him through the bond of our contract that he was exhausted, accepting of his fate, and willing to finally embrace it.

I was walking slowly through the wood, in no hurry to reach our destination. An odd sense of dread was settling in my stomach like a poisonous miasma, yet I had no idea why. Should I not be elated that I would finally taste upon my parched tongue his delectable soul? Should I not be burning with the relief of finally being free from the shackles that he had placed upon me with the sealing of our covenant? I knew those things to be true, and yet…

Ciel Phantomhive did not know fear. He stared ahead, down the path that was leading him ever so slowly to his demise, yet he only felt peace. The cold grip of death was falling upon him, and the relief he possessed in his dainty body was staggering. He seemed to relax into me as we approached the ruins, awash in the pale moonlight that gave it an ethereal glow. I approached the stone dais, setting him upon a lone, stonework bench, and quickly set about to removing his eyepatch. I wished to gaze into his heterochromatic eyes, one tainted a deep amethyst with the dull contract mark imbedded within, the other as blue and bottomless as a sapphire. He stared back at me for only a moment, before letting his lids fall shut, exhaustion creeping into him once more.

Kneeling before him, I brought my face close to his, shedding my gloves so that I could feel the heat of his flesh warm my chilled fingers. As my long digits brushed along his cheek and through his kitten-soft locks, I felt a tremulous shiver dance through him. The beating of his heart was slow, and it sat heavy with fatigue in the cavity of his chest; I could feel his pulse within my own body, a side effect of the strength of our bond. I was a mimicry of a human, using his livelihood as my own to pass off in the mortal world. Without him, it would be as though I was a walking corpse, and I would not be able to remain in this world. Perhaps it was time to end this foolish game of pretend, and return to the hellish world from which I spawned.

Our faces were mere centimeters apart; all I had to do was lean that much closer, and my lips would be upon his. I would feast upon his soul with a ravenous hunger, taste the perfection in each exquisite shred of his mouthwatering essence. My thirst would finally be quenched, the burning all-consuming aches of starvation would finally cease. And yet…

My ivory lips trembled in hesitation as I gazed upon his accepting face. I found that I could not do it. I could not leech onto him and rip his soul from him; I could not inflict the pain of his essence being stripped and tattered into a thousand fragments. The thought of even attempting to consume him plunged me into the blackest depths of hell, filling me apprehension and self-loathing. Why could I not dine upon him as my body so craved to do?

I let my hands slide from his blae tresses, my vermillion eyes watching with interest as they stopped to rest upon his slender nape. His skin was soft and smooth beneath my tremoring fingers, elegance visible in every curve and divot of his flesh. My hands tightened around his delicate neck, jerking harshly to the left before I had time to even consider what I was doing. The sickening snapping of bone echoed in my ears; the rattling of his last breath in his lungs weighed upon me with an execrable finality.

His life had ended at my hand, yet I had not consumed his soul.

I could sense the Reaper's presence before he stepped out from the shadows of the wood. I did not move my eyes from the sight of my Master even as I rose to my feet and stepped away from him. I allowed the Reaper to approach in his fluid movements, my chest aching and making it hard for me to properly think. My intuition told me that he had already known that Ciel's soul would be his for the culling. There is no other reason for him to have been able to show up as swiftly as he had.

"You knew?" The words left my lips before I had decided to speak them. My voice sounded hollow and deadened, even to my own ears.

"Yes," William T. Spears confirmed without hesitation, his tone as bored and uncaring as it had always been, though he did not look upon me.

The next question ripped from my throat, unbidden. "For how long?" I was not one to torment myself, yet I could not stop myself from asking the tedious queries.

Spears finally let his piercingly cold eyes assess me, as if he were seeing me in an entirely new—and unwelcomed—light. "It has been transcribed in his book for approximately 3 months, 14 days, 23 hours, and 5 minutes."

I wanted to know why his fate had changed, how it had come about, yet I could not bring myself to ask. Lest he did not know; for fear that he did. I could scan my memory as much as I wanted, though I could not figure out what had caused this outcome. My chest felt heavy, quite odd considering I had never felt something of the sort.

My attentions were turned outward as Spears pushed his spectacles up with the tip of his death scythe. His chilling chartreuse eyes were gazing at the corpse of my Master, as if analyzing something that was invisible to my vermillion orbs. I stood completely still, wanting to go yet morbidly desiring to watch him cull the only soul that I have ever and would ever desire so powerfully.

"Are you quite positive that you will not consume his soul?" His monotonous inquiry took me off guard. "He is still bound to you."

Confusion settled upon me like a suffocating duvet; I did not comprehend the meaning of that statement, so I chose to disregard it. I shook my head once as an answer. I would not devour him; I _could not._

Spears merely shrugged at me, and with a sharp flick of his wrist, his scythe shot out and unceremoniously severed my Master's soul from his unmoving body. Ciel Phantomhive was no more; his body was now an empty shell. The Reaper disappeared, leaving me alone in my self-loathing. I took the feather-light corpse into my arms, returning to the gondola on which we had arrived. Placing his body back in the bed of roses, I positioned him as he had been before, taking one last look at him before gently pushing the boat out to sea. As it drifted away from the island, I called up a fire, setting him and everything surrounding him alight with the consuming flames. I watched the gondola float away, a show of dancing flames and ash, until I could no longer see it in the distance, before finally turning away.

I had not known then what the Reaper had meant. If I had, would it have affected my actions? Would it have proceeded the way it should have gone?

 **E/N:** Well, I hope you enjoyed this chapter. Comments would be greatly appreciated. Make sure you show Kit some love for her wondrously perfect poem. You have no idea how much I love you, my little devil~.

Kisses and Love, Always love, Ritsy


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N:** Well, this was a bit painful to write; possibly because it's sad, possibly because my writing is so atrocious that it pains me to even look at. However, this isn't for me, it's for my little devil, and I worked very hard on it so that they would thoroughly enjoy it. I tried my best to make it as beautifully painful for you as I could, lovey~

Oh, there is some French featured in this chapter, and the translations will be in the end notes. I had to ask my Kit to translate a few sentences for me, and if they're wrong, it I because I copied them down wrong or misread my chicken-scratch handwriting. Anyway, I hope you enjoy this chapter.

* * *

 _December 7, 1899_

 _Paris, France_

I had fled England ten years ago, leaving behind the country that still held the memory of Ciel Phantomhive, yet I had not tread very far from it at all. I had holed myself up in France, longing to stay close enough to where I had met him, yet far enough away that I would not be assaulted with the pain of loss. I could not return to my own world, for a reason that I could not even fathom. No matter how much I tried to leave the human world, I simply could not. And so I had given up trying to return from whence I had spawned. One could barely call the state I was in living, nor the hovel I had created for myself a suitable home. Since arriving in Paris, I had not moved from this spot. Hidden away in an abandoned, rundown building, I had created a nest for myself out of hay and a thin sheet. It hardly mattered if it were comfortable or not; my mockery of a human form did not need such mortal things as comfort or warmth. Had I been able to succumb to death, I'm sure I would have long ago to pneumonia or hypothermia. It was quite surprising that I had not yet begun to mold or decay for as long as I had been immobile, though my entire body was as stiff as a board. I was not entirely sure that I could move anymore, but I was not willing to test out that theory. Another hunger pang wracked my entire body, causing a hoarse moan to rip through my throat.

Starvation consumed my being, setting fire to my veins, nauseating me to the point of no return. The stomach cramps had long past unbearable, as I had already been half-mad with starving when under the employ of my Master. As famished as I may be, I refused to eat a single insignificant soul. Perhaps eventually I would starve to death; what bliss it would be to no longer suffer existence. Time seemed to drag on into eternity as I lay here and suffered. I was tormenting myself by refusing to feast; at this point, I was not even sure if I could eat if I wanted to.

I closed my tired eyes for only a few minutes, when I felt a presence that seemed all too familiar, just outside of the building I had claimed as mine. Tiny feet padding along the filthy floor, the scuffling of random bits of garbage being knocked aside as hesitant footsteps led the person inside. A small gasp of breath filling lungs tickled my ears, yet I refused to open my eyes. This was merely a hallucination; one of many, in fact. It was not the first, and it would certainly not be the last. I would imagine him, alive and well, breathing, but when I opened my eyes, he would never be there. He was the ghosting breath of the wind on my skin, something I could no longer grasp within my hands. I did not want to face the disappointment time and again, and open my sanguine eyes to the emptiness of my lonely hovel.

The gentlest touch of a soft, dainty hand against my cheek caused me to start. Never had a hallucination left me with the sensation of an actual, physical touch. My eyelids flew open without my permission to do so, and I gazed up into the filthy, cherubic face of my Master. Shock coursed through me, and I jerked away, finally moving from my spot for the first time in several years. It appeared that I could in fact, move, and that my stiff and dirtied body had not become a part of the ground beneath my nest. I gaped at him, a new kind of pain seizing my chest cavity; I could not tear my ocular orbs from his person, and they drank him in as if he were an oasis in a desert, and I a parched traveler.

His body was slight and short; he was barely a waif of a boy, so emaciated that I could see every indentation of bone against flesh. His creamy, pale skin was caked in dirt, but was still flawless as it had been the night I had stolen his life. I could clearly see that he was younger than he had been then, perhaps around the age of 5, but his eyes seemed to possess a world of knowledge that someone so young should not have. I stared into his abysmal orbs; he had heterochromia, as one was the bottomless ocean of sapphire, the other a pale, yet equally as deep, amethyst. The jewels were framed in his obscenely long, inky lashes, which brushed against his high cheekbones when he blinked. His petal-pink full lips were parted slightly as he drew in a breath, sounding to my ears as though in shocked recognition. If my assumptions that the boy before me, who so resembled my Master, were correct, then he was a reincarnation, and should have no memory of me whatsoever. He should not recognize me, in any way. And yet…

A slight breeze blows in through a gaping hole in the wall, and his scent hits my nostrils then. The delectable aroma of vanilla and the barest hint of bergamot washed over me, causing my mouth to water and my stomach to cramp up painfully. It was him; there was no other that possessed a scent as he did, one that drove me mad with the desire to ravish and consume him. I was positively ravenous, intoxicated on the fragrance of him. I inhaled selfishly, sucking in the air around me, trying to hold his essence inside of my lungs. I could feel my fangs elongating in my mouth, and I was sure that my vermillion eyes flashed a bright magenta as I swallowed up his image. I sat frozen before him, starving and tormented with his tempting presence. I crave him, from his very soul to the last hair on his head, and yet I still could not think to devour him.

" _Tu dois manger quelque chose,"_ he murmured softly, his expression grave as he looked at me. I must have seemed as emaciated to him as he does to me.

Licking my dry lips, I cast my gaze downward. My throat is drier than the sun, and my voice is rough and broken from years of not using it. _"Je ne peux plus manger."_

I am now aware of it, the blindingly obvious truth; he knows. He remembers his past life, and he recognizes me. It is in his entire posture, in his eyes, in his voice. It tears me apart to know this; he could have had a better life, if he did not remember.

Had I not been so sure that he had, in fact, remembered his life as Ciel Phantomhive, his next words would have confirmed it for me. _"_ _Tu dois me manger."_ He is demanding this of me; he wants me to devour him.

" _Je refuse,"_ I whisper, pain lacing the words. I cannot consume his soul, I will not. For whatever reason, I had not been able to 10 years ago; I knew that fact had not changed. He stepped closer to me, kneeling in front of me as he slowly reached out his small, dirt-encrusted hands. He placed them on my cheeks, gently caressing my skin as he sucked in a breath. He seemed to be drawing me in, memorising every part of me, so as not to forget. I could see his eyes begin to glaze over with unshed tears; knowing him, they would remain unshed until they dried up.

"Sebastian," his voice was quieter than a gentle breeze, yet it was colored with pain. His nails dug into my skin, his eyes meeting mine. Agony danced across his expression as petals did on a canvas. _"_ _Tu dois me manger,"_ he pleaded, sorrow dripping from his lips. A single tear welled over his lower eyelid, and trailed slowly down his gaunt cheek until it reached his jawline, where it fell from his skin. It hit the floor, leaving behind the residue of a droplet of misery.

I shook my head slightly, placing a hand over his as the other reached towards him. My thumb grazed his cheek, wiping away the evidence of a tear. _"_ _Tu ne me contrôle plus."_

I could tell that he did not believe me, and I was not even sure that I believed myself. I sat very still as he shuffled closer to me, shifting the position of his body so that he was in a better sitting position. He crossed his legs, his hands moving from my face to my hair; tiny fingers stroked the matted, inky locks, untangling them as the digits slid through. His fingertips trailed back over my face, brushing against my lips before his eyes once again found mine. I had remained a statue whilst he touched my face and hair, and though I yearned to touch him, make sure he was as real as I knew him to be, I resisted the urge.

As if he could read my thoughts, his tongue darted out over his lips as he whispered, _"touche-moi."_

That was the all I needed to hear; I gently grasped his tiny waist, lifting him and setting him upon my lap. My fingers stroked through his blae hair, as kitten soft as ever, regardless of the dirt. "Ciel," I murmured, my mouth speaking his name without my permission, though he didn't seem to care. I ran my digits over every depression and indentation in his skin, feeling each jutting bone trying to rip free from his flesh. He was so frail, wasting away with starvation; I curled my arms around him protectively, cradling him against me. I could not let him suffer in this world as he was now. I knew what I had to do.

We sat like that for a long time, just staring at each other; I committed his visage to my memory, something that I could look back on to torture myself with. Hours must have passed, because he began to look very tired, his eyes half lidding and his breathing slowing down considerably. His arm hung loosely around my neck, and I gently set him upon my hay nest, letting his arm fall to his side. Covering him up with my sheet, I tried to make the experience as comfortable as was possible for him, though I could tell from the look of him that he was no longer familiar with such a luxury as comfort. He shifted his body, curling up on his side, his tiny hand clutching onto mine. His eyes drooped heavily, but he fought to keep them open, to stay awake. He lazily rolled his orbs to look at me, and he gave a very soft sigh.

" _Sebastian, ne veux-tu pas rester avec moi?"_ he asked, his voice so soft that if I were not a demon, I would not have been able to decipher what he had said.

A nod was my only answer as I lie down beside him, allowing his hand to continue clinging to mine. I watched his face as he slowly gave into the sleep that claimed him; his eyes opened a few times, though they quickly shut and stilled. His breathing evened out into long and deep breaths. When he had finally fallen asleep, I sat up, my chest tightening with what I had to do next. I caressed his face, then pinched his nose shut and covered his mouth, cutting off his air supply. The next few minutes was agony for me as he thrashed about in his sleep, his lungs seizing, trying to draw air when he couldn't. I could hear his heartbeat growing ever slower, until it finally stopped. My hand dropped from his face, and I stared at his lifeless body, my chest feeling hollow.

I had once again killed my Master, but at least this time he had not been awake to see it.

" _Je regrette,"_ I whimpered, as a few tears carved silent paths upon my cheeks.

* * *

 **E/N:** As promised, the French to English translations:

"Tu dois manger quelque chose" – You ought to eat something.

"Je ne peux plus manger" – I can no longer eat (because of a disability).

"Tu dois me manger" – You must eat me.

"Je refuse" – I refuse.

"Tu ne me contrôle plus" – You do not control me any longer.

"Touche-moi" – Touch me.

"Ne veux-tu pas rester avec moi" – Won't you stay with me.

"Je regrette" – I regret.

Thank you so much for reading, I really appreciate it. A big thanks to Kit for translating so much for me; I know I was hella demanding, and I apologize for interrupting you whilst you were writing to make you translate things for me. I love and appreciate you~ you have no idea how much (but if I said it was more than Chick-Fil-A's sweet tea, perhaps it puts it into perspective). Anyway, if y'all like this chapter, or story even, feel free to leave me comments and let me know. Or don't, if you don't want to.

Kisses and Love, Always Love, Ritsy


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